EARLY YESTERDAY EVENING I found myself on the West Side and with a bit of free time, so I sauntered down Broadway to Columbus Circle to finally investigate in the flesh this great public place after its complete rehabilitation some two years ago. I am happy to report that the Circle’s refurbishment is quite a successful one. My only reservations were minor details, but as these were all done in an extremely simple and smooth modern style, they are much less objectional, and perhaps serve to focus attention on the sculptor Gaetano Russo’s splendid monumental column from which Cristóbal Colón, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of the New World presides over the grand plaza consecrated to his memory.

Colón’s name is rendered on the monument as ‘Cristoforo Colombo’, which seems appropriate since the monument was paid for by public subscription raised by Italian-Americans, and it is commonly assumed that Columbus was Italian. He may have been Genoese, Catalan, Portuguese, or Corsican, but he described himself as being from lands under the rule of Genoa, which lends significant credence to the Genoese and Corsican theories. In Spain, however, he is apparently Spanish, or so one daughter of Iberia, the wife of a frequent reader of this little corner of the web, informs us. The happy couple were strolling through Columbus Circle recently and the good lady was shocked to discover the purported Italian origin of the man who brought Christianity to the New World. After all, Spain’s national day — the Día de la Hispanidad — is October 12, the day in 1492 that Columbus first set foot in the New World. (In woebegone Venezuela, the vulgar socialist dictator has proclaimed October 12 as the Día de la Resistencia Indígena, or Day of Indigenous Resistance, and the Columbus Column in their capital city of Caracas was toppled on that day in 2004).

Anyhow, not only was the good lady was shocked at our monument’s proclamation of the Discoverer’s Italian-ness but the combination of that with the presence in Columbus Circle of the beautiful U.S.S. Maine Monument led the observer to conclude that the public plaza should be instead be named “Anti-Spain Square”. It was the disastrous sinking of the Maine, after all, which led to the Spanish-American War, the result of which was America’s most unfortunate and regretful act of taking Spain’s empire off her hands. (Contrary to Mr. Kipling’s idealistic urging of America to take up the imperial mantle in his poem ‘White Man’s Burden’, this turned out to be a fairly good deal for the Spaniards, and a very poor deal for the peoples of the United States).

Politics aside, I enjoyed the few minutes during which I ruminated in the square (or circle, if ye be pedants). I recall many years ago the debate surrounding how to improve Columbus Circle that there was a near-universal desire for there to be more trees but that the very shallow depth between the street surface and the subway below presented difficulties in this regard. The redesigners have solved this problem by encircling the center of the circle with a raised ridge, on which are planted a number of trees which, we trust, will be even more appreciated as they mature. The raised ridge, which features jets of flowing water around the inner circle, also serves to innoculate the center from the noise of the traffic which, the Circle being situated at the confluence of Broadway, Central Park West, Central Park South, and Eigth Avenue, is considerable.

And so, I judge the new Columbus Circle a success, and I am happy to the report that the American Society of Landscape Architects concur, having awarded it their General Design Award of Honor. Another random fact which surprisingly few people know is that Columbus Circle is the spot from which distances to New York are numerated, akin to Moscow’s Red Square and London’s Trafalgar Square (if I recall correctly).

LEAVING COLUMBUS CIRCLE, I sauntered back up Broadway to another of Manhattan’s engaging places, Lincoln Center. Critics accused the architects of the performing arts complex of cribbing off of Rome’s E.U.R., but one wishes the three halls facing Lincoln Center’s plaza had the same crispness of those modern Roman structures. The thirty years between the E.U.R. of 1930s Italy and the Lincoln Center of 1960s New York were years in which the quality of modernism declined just as greatly as its supremacy increased. Despite this, the plaza of Lincoln Center is one of the most successful public places in Manhattan. I have often lamented the absence from New York of the open piazza so common on the Continent. This plaza competes with Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace as the best example of the type in Manhattan.

The plaza is raised above the neighboring Lincoln Square (one of the many triangular squares created by Broadway’s healthy disregard for the grid) and is reached by a gentle rise of stairs. Viewed from the square it appropriately seems like a stage upon which all our great dramas are played. The dance of the New York City Ballet in the State Theatre on the left, the music of the New York Philharmonic in Avery Fisher Hall on the left, and in the center, the Metropolitan Opera in the Metropolitan Opera House; the greatest opera company in the Americas, not to mention one of the best in the entire world. And from the hour of seven or so on the evening of performances, the three arts mix and mingle in the plaza as attendées wait to meet their companions and enter whichever of the respective halls they are to spend the evening. Some jealously preserve a seat of honor on the rim of the central fountain, while others hide from the elements (the beating sun, the heaving rain) in the shelter of the arcades, while still more meander slowly to and fro around this piazza dell’arte.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the elders of Lincoln Center insist on erecting temporary stage structures in the middle of the plaza, partially obstructing the fountain, during the warmer months when, above all other times, it should be open for all to enjoy. The creators of Lincoln Center conceived of the obvious desire for outdoor performances during the summer, and so they built the bandshell in Damrosch Park in between the Opera House and Avery Fisher Hall, just diagonally adjacent to the plaza. Surely the plaza is meant to be an open space where all the events can mix, blend, interact, influence, before finally separating into their appropriate places. If there are to be outdoor performances, hold them where they were meant to be, and if that place suffers from some malfunction of design, then redesign that place rather than rudely interjecting a particular event into what was meant to be the public square for all.

THIS PARTICULAR EVENING it was into Avery Fisher Hall for a performance of the New York Philharmonic, now in its 165th year. The program was Rossini’s overture to Semiramide and Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 in D major (D.500), with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5 in F major (Op. 76). Riccardo Muti wielded the conductor’s baton and the result was definitely less than was expected. I had only heard Muti’s conducting on the radio in passing and, while admittedly not devoting much thought to it, he seemed a fairly capable conductor. In person, however, he left much to be desired. Rossini’s overture was merely lackluster but Schubert’s symphony was actually surprisingly poor. Perhaps the worst thing was observing Muti in action, for the man looked like an utter fool. His conducting seemed unnatural, choreographed, even foppish. And those ridiculous jestures towards the first violins! I wanted to slap the man, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the violins wanted to themselves. Towards the middle of the Schubert symphony, I began to think of the man as a proper ass, the tails of his evening jacket acting the part of hind legs. My only solution to the St. Vitus’s dance on the conductor’s dais was to shut my eyes and imagine that I was there in the Austrian capital in that autumn of 1815, after the chancellors and ministers of the crowned heads of Europe had departed the Congress of Vienna when peace and order were plotted, in the home of Otto Hatwig where (scholars posit) the work was premiered.

The friend I accompanied that evening actually knows about the inner workings of music (I am actually an ignoramus on the subject, and simply like what sounds good to me) and agreed completely with me on the subject during the intermission. Luckily, the Dvořák fared better, but one had the niggling suspicion that this was the Philharmonic working its magic in spite of Mr. Muti, rather than at the command of his baton. My knowledge and appreciation of Dvořák has slowly grown, from that first passing fondness we all have for his Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”. My appreciation for the Philharmonic grows, when I see they have printed in the program that Mr. Dvořák was born in Mühlhausen, Bohemia, rather than the more modish style of “Nelahozeves, Czech Republic” that would find favor elsewhere.

Perhaps I am too hard on Mr. Muti. Perhaps he and the Philharmonic were simply not a good fit for eachother. At any rate, I shouldn’t complain as one doesn’t often get box seats to a sold-out performance with every seat in the hall occupied (though, to be honest, the sound is better down in the orchestra seats). But how I wish I could have seen von Karajan while he was alive!

After the baton had finally fallen for the night, my friend and I had the same stroke of genius at exactly the same moment and decided to head up to good old Café Lalo, but unfortunately everyone else had the same idea (Saturday night? Lalo’s? What did we expect?) so we comforted ourselves with a pint or two at the Parlour instead.

Above, the scene outside as Ron Paul heads in to Stephen Colbert’s faux news show and below, the interview itself.

On the Daily Show:

Interestingly, Ron Paul remains on top for Technorati tags, tracking what people are talking about on blogs, even beating Paris Hilton at the height of her media kerfuffle.

A wise old man once said ‘good fences make good neighbours’ but history is chock full of territorial disputes nonetheless. Woefully, ancient land claims and cross-border irridentism reared their ugly head on the pages of the Daily Telegraph as well. These two columns, the fifth installment in our series introducing you to the greatest newspaper columnist who ever lived and breathed, retells just such a territorial dispute which erupted over changes in the layout and denomination of the newspaper page on which the Peter Simple column perenially (since the dawn of time, beyond the age of our forefathers) appeared.

A Small Crisis

For some time now, the eastern part of the region in which my column occasionally appears has been headed “End Column” no matter what appears on it, whether literary criticism, humour or chess (which has taken permanent occupation of the southern part of the territory). Then one morning the world woke to a startling innovation: the territory was simply headed “Chess”. What had happened? Had an extremist group of chess writers suddenly claimed sovereignty over the whole region? It was the more surprising in that of all the paginal powers, Chess, devoted as it is to pure intellect, has historically always been the least aggressive, well satisfied with the ample territory it occupies and threatening no other power.

A serious diplomatic incident followed. Our own columnar government was not slow in sending a strong protest to the chess authorities. Partial mobilisation was ordered. A squadron of Blériot Mark II reconnaissance aircraft was sent to patrol the whole area. A gunboat of the Don Carlos class was despatched to the Interpaginal Sea.

Fortunately, the traditional panic and flight of the peasantry was quelled in time. Soon, wiser counsels prevailed and the crisis evaporated as rapidly as it had arisen. But it cannot be too strongly emphasised that in the event of a serious threat to the paginal balance of power, the column could not and would not stand idly by. For although this column is not always corporeally present in the eastern territory it is always present in a metaphorical and mystical sense, in all the territories where it has ever been.

Signs and Wonders

AS veteran readers of this column will recall (“Are there any others?” our boring expert “Narcolept” never fails to ask), a diplomatic impasse was caused last month when the chess flag was raised over the territory formerly known as “End Column”, implying an exclusive claim to suzerainty over a territory shared by other powers including ourselves.

The situation was supposed to have been normalised when, as is so often the case, wiser counsels prevailed. Sadly, this is not so. Extremist elements in the column, who have long been impatient with its conciliatory policy, are thought to be planning direct action by launching a surprise attack on the heartland of chess itself, the southern region in which its authority has never been disputed, and setting up a puppet state with only nominal allegiance, perhaps, to the parent column.

Are these hotheads and firebrands harking back to the so-called “time of troubles” in the 1970s, the time of “Peter Simple II” and the labyrinthine intrigues that led to a coup by General Waugh and the present “binary” dispensation? As a timely pronunciamiento from the Ministry of Columnar Guidance warns, “Such irresponsible day-dreaming could have the gravest possible consequences,” even leading to the onset of the long dreaded Fimbul Winter and the end of the column itself.

To make matters worse, certain elements seem bent on defying the basic columnar Law of Non-Interaction, which prevents different aspects of the column from interfering with each other. For example, it is rumoured that certain senior officers of that normally inactive regiment, the Stretchfordshire Yeomanry, are sympathetic to the extremists and, in the event of an attack on the chess territory, might join an expeditionary force (which would be styled a “liberation army”). As the pronunciamiento insists, this would be “playing with fire”.

Nor is this all. General Sir Frederick (“Tiger”) Nidgett, veteran war hero, founder of the Royal Army Tailoring Corps and Saviour of Port Said in the “dark days of 1942 when the Nazi hordes were bawling tastelessly at the gates of Egypt” – see Nidgett’s autobiography Up Sticks and Away (Viper and Bugloss, £25; paperback, £15; bulk orders welcomed) – is reported to have offered his services to the insurgents as military adviser and expert on combined operations. In a startling development, sources in the Columnar Foreign Office have dismissed Nidgett as “a buffoon and play actor whose boasted wartime service was in fact confined to looting bales of cloth and blackmailing shopkeepers in the bazaars of Cairo”. But a statement issued “from the desk of Gen Sir Frederick Nidgett” countered these criticisms with a firm “no comment”. Members of the Tailoring Corps Veterans Association have already hit back in defence of their founder, threatening reprisals with their traditional weapons, the dreaded armoured trouserpresses, failing an immediate withdrawal and apology.

To add to the confusion and breakdown of basic columnar principles, Sir Alywin Goth-Jones, the unpopular chief constable of Stretchford, has offered to place a squadron of his controversial police submarine force (currently patrolling the lake in sex-maniac-haunted Sadcake Park in pursuit of drink-drivers) at the disposal of the proposed expedition for a landing on the supposedly undefended shores of chess’s southern territories.

The pronunciamiento goes on to say that the extremists have “stirred up a veritable hornets’ nest and it is high time wiser counsels prevailed”. But will this deter irresponsible hotheads encouraged by intelligence reports, almost entirely fallacious, of growing dissent within chess itself, and signs of a modernising tendency which would put this noble and august game under the control of that most un-English authority, the Ministry of Sport?

This would lead to assimilation in the West Midland Chess League, responsible for the up-to-the-minute vandalism and hooliganism which mark the disgustingly popular annual matches between Stretchford Chess Circle and Nerdley Boardsmen, when drunken fans invade and overturn the board, and even assault the pieces without distinction between queen and pawn.

As the pronunciamiento inevitably states, it is time to draw back from the precipice. Equally, it cannot be too strongly (or too often) emphasised that, in the event of a serious threat to the paginal balance of power, this column could not and would not stand idly by.

Gerald Warner wrote a recent Scotland on Sunday column on the occasion of Edinburgh University revoking the honorary degree bestowed upon Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

He discussed various honorary degrees which had been bestowed upon monsters, tyrants, and evil men, and finished his column with a case from Spain.

The most morally grotesque academic elevation was perpetrated in Spain, in 2005, when the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid conferred a doctorate honoris causa on Santiago Carrillo, former leader of the Spanish Communist Party.

As chief of police in Madrid in 1936, he had presided over Cheka death squads that murdered huge numbers of people (2,800 in one weekend) for the crime of being ‘bourgeois’.

Throughout the squalid degree ceremony, people concerned with the honour of Spanish academe punctuated the proceedings with shouts of “Murderer!”

The most effective denunciation of this naked emperor, however, had been made during his journey back from exile. As the aircraft approached Madrid, with the arrogance of a reinstated member of the nomenklatura, he told the stewardess to ask the captain if he could enter the cockpit to get a better view of the capital.

Moments later the public address system came to life: “This is your captain speaking. In 15 minutes we shall be landing at Madrid Barajas airport. Before that, I would like you to see the historic site of Paracuellos de Jarama to the right of us. That was where thousands of innocent people were executed during our civil war. The man responsible for those executions is one of your fellow passengers, Don Santiago Carrillo Solares. He is sitting in seat 27-B.”

“That pilot,” Gerald writes, “deserved an honorary degree”.

ROME, 21 MAY 2007 (From the Order of Malta) — The Grand Master’s meeting in Warsaw with the President of the Polish Republic Lech Kaczynski and the joint signature with the Health Minister of a framework cooperation agreement were two of the most significant moments of the state visit of His Most Eminent Highness Fra’ Andrew Bertie to Poland.

Received at the presidential palace with military honours, after the exchange of decorations, the Grand Master and the President of the Republic, flanked by their respective delegations and by ambassadors Vincenzo Manno and Hanna Suchocka, enjoyed a long and cordial conversation. A tangible sign of solid bilateral relations is the signature of the cooperation agreement for medical and hospital assistance. The order’s Grand Hospitaller and the Polish Health Minister signed a document that will help to improve the assistance given by the Order of Malta’s Polish Association, and in particular to the poorest and most needy. There will also be increasing support for terminal patients and the disabled through the numerous Order of Malta centres active in Poland, as well as cooperation for the development of emergency and first-aid medicine.

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This poem by Heinrich Heine (I’m sure I need not tell you) is one of my favorites, and was famously set to music by Schumann. I had intended to post it to herald the beginning of May, but distractions got the better of me, so I am afraid it must herald the month’s departure.

What can one say about Ron Paul? This man is clearly the dream candidate for the presidency. A doctor and Air Force veteran with years of experience in congress (with a record to be proud of), Ron Paul tells the simple, honest truth and applies common sense to politics. Who knew, until Paul told us, that if we returned to year-2000 spending levels, we could eliminate the federal income tax entirely. Entirely. Imagine that! Paul is the only Republican candidate willing to tell it like it is rather than spew meaningless piously ideological bits of nonsense to please the Republican establishment. I almost wish I was a Republican so that I could have the satisfaction of voting for him in the primary.

Naturally, the media have done their utmost to ignore Dr. Paul or pidgeon-hole him as irrelevant but the word’s been getting out anyhow. He’s even managed to turn up as a topic of discussion on ABC’s ‘The View’, flagship television program of the bored suburban housewife.

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Die Burgemeester van Kaapstad

AND SO, Helen Zille, the Mayor of Cape Town, has been elected Leader of the Opposition in South Africa, a somewhat curious choice to head the country’s (liberal) Democratic Alliance against the current government (the ANC alliance of racial nationalists, the Communist Party, and the trade union confederation) as she is not actually a member of parliament and has stated that she has no intention of seeking election to that body. If only she would bring a little more reserve to the council chamber, a virtue she is sadly lacking (as evidenced in pictures above and below).

Ms. Zille has a reputation as a bit of a go-get-em mayor, and something of a pragmatist, which is welcome, as any efforts that chip away at the rule of the noxious African National Congress are wholeheartedly welcome. And she’d have to try hard to be any worse in her new job than her noxious predecessor, ‘Tony’ Leon. While we would probably vote (depending on geography) for the Inkhata Freedom Party or the Vryheidsfront, we wish Ms. Zille luck as Leader of the Opposition.

http://norumbega.us/

Charles Coulombe takes on Europe and the Empire.

Thomas Marshall discusses the rising tide of Scotland’s SNP.

Andrew Cusack tackles an Afrikaans folk song and Anglosphere Union.

George Irwin ponders his move to Zululand.

In Bohemian Living, Lord Michael Pratt’s The Great Country Houses of the Czech Republic and Slovakia is reviewed.

And of course we have Thirty Facts About the Duke of Edinburgh.

THE QUEEN HAS once again visited Williamsburg, Virginia’s ancient capital, after an absence of half a century. His Excellency Mr. Timothy Kaine, the Governor of the Commonwealth Virginia, was good enough to call a public holiday in the state, giving public workers the day off in celebration of the Queen’s visit. During the trip, Her Majesty spoke to the General Assembly of Virginia, the oldest legislature in the New World, in Richmond (the current capitol), as well as meeting privately with the friends and relatives of the victims of the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. In Williamsburg, she received an honorary degree from the College of William and Mary and was the guest at a luncheon at the Governor’s Palace, once the official residence of her predecessors’ viceroys in Virginia. (more…)

Ian Smith, the Grand Old Man of Africa, Speaks

Here is an interesting nine-minute-long clip from a documentary on Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, featuring the Hon. Mr. Smith himself, now eighty-eight years of age, as well as Kathy Olds, a landowner, and Ernest Mtunzi, a former aide to ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo.

“What we believed in was responsible majority rule, as opposed to irresponsible majority rule and I stand by that,” Mr. Smith tells the interviewer. “I think it is important that before you give a person the vote you ensure that his roots go down, that he’s part of the whole structure of the country.”

“Smith is an African,” Ernest Mtunzi says. “He understands the African mentality. […] Smith was being realistic. If you give people something before they’re ready, they’re going to mess it up. And that has happened.”

“Africa is a continent which is subject to a great deal of friction and argument and change,” Smith concludes. “That’s part of the world generally but more so Africa than anywhere else. So because of that we live in hope. We think that the people they in the end will say we’ve had enough.”

“In the interest of our people and of other people this part of the world, let’s work together. […] Let’s just accept that we are all part of Africa, all part of the world. Let’s all work together and the more we can get people to accept that philosophy I think the greater the hope for the whole world.”

This little corner of the web naturally extends a very warm welcome to Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, as she visits the Commonwealth of Virginia this week in commemoration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the plantation of Jamestown and the birth of our country. She will no doubt recall the words of her predecessor, Charles I, who counted his kingdoms of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France (as was still claimed at the time) and added “En Dat Virginia Quintam!” — “And so Virginia makes five!” (to give an approximate translation). We trust the Old Dominion will do all Her Majesty’s former possessions on these shores proudly with a warm and dignified welcome.

May Our Lady of Walsingham, (whose national shrine is in Williamsburg, Virginia) protect, bless, and convert England, Virginia, America, and all the English-speaking world!

Previously: Old Dominion Will Receive Her Majesty

His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I was the Emperor of Ethiopia up to his death at the hands of Communist revolutionaries, so it seems a bit silly to call him the “former Ethiopian Emperor”. More importantly, however, is that he was a devout Christian and was so opposed to Rastafarianism, which considered Haile Selassie to be the Messiah, that he sent Orthodox missionaries to Jamaica in order to convert Rastafarians to Christianity.

THE CROSS OF SAINT GEORGE snaps proudly from the flagpole above Westminster Cathedral, the Administrator of which, Msgr. Mark Langham, has given us a special St. George’s Day treat by revealing the newly-commissioned designs for completing the mosaic work in that cathedral’s chapel dedicated to the patron saint of England.

In the business section of today’s New York Sun, of all places, Liz Peek gives us another reason why we need a monarchy. In ‘Why America Needs Its Own Queen’s Award‘, Ms. Peek profiles the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, initiated by Royal Warrant in 1966 as the Queen’s Award for Industry and awarded to British companies for excellence in international trade, innovation, and sustainable development.

Of course, Ms. Peek attempts to offer some possible solutions to our detrimental lack of monarchy with regard to this particular aspect, but none of them have quite the appeal of restoring the monarchy. All that would really be necessary would be to pass an amendment removing fourteen words from Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. This is the part that requires the member states of the United States to have republican forms of government. This removal would at least give states the option of becoming monarchies, which is only fair, after all.

Category: Monarchy

In honour of the anniversary of the birth of Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, I raised a glass of Warre’s (Purveyors to the Household of the Queen of Denmark) this evening. May God bless and keep Her Majesty!

Some of you may recall that Her Majesty is of a somewhat artistic temperment. She sent her sketches inspired by The Lord of the Rings to J.R.R. Tolkein while he was alive, and the author liked them so much he had them published in the Danish edition of the trilogy. Above is an episcopal cope designed by Her Majesty in 1988 for the Cathedral of Viborg.

His Royal Highness Prince Christian, the Queen’s grandson and the future King of Denmark.

Naturally, we also wish a very happy birthday and many, many bountiful blessings to another of Christendom’s reigning monarchs: Christ’s vicar and our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, who, it seems, is a reader of Chronicles. God bless our Pope, the great, the good!

ONE OF MY FAVORITE handsome and dignified, and yet relatively small, buildings is the Felix Meritis on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It has a long and interesting history to accompany the beauty of its design. The ‘Felix Meritis’ was a learned society founded by a number of prominent burghers of Amsterdam in 1777 for the promotion of the arts and sciences in their city. Its name is Latin for ‘fortunate (or more literally, ‘happy’) by merit’. Ten years later, the Felix Meritis purchased four narrow homes on the Keizersgracht and constructed a building, designed by the architect Jacob Otten Husly, on the site. (more…)

An article (two versions of which are reproduced here below) recently printed exemplifies one of the tragic aspects of the Falklands War: the Anglo-Argentines who, out of loyalty to their homeland, were forced into waging war against their mother country. The subject of the article, Mr. Alan Craig, happens to be a former student of St. Alban’s College, a fine institution in the Provincia de Buenos Aires (currently celebrating its centenary) which I had the great privilege of briefly attending. (C.f. How Andrew Cusack Became a Tea Drinker). Another sad aspect of the Falklands War is that if there are any two nations which should enjoy the bonds of friendship, it is Britain and Argentina. It is a shame when two countries which should be natural companions, perhaps allies, have deep-seated and long-lasting emotions in the way. (One thinks of Germany and Poland in particular).

Interestingly, Argentine textbooks contain maps of the Falkland Islands in which all the towns and geographical features have contrived names en Castellano. Port Stanley, for example, is called Puerto Argentino, while the Falklands themselves are known to Argentines as las Malvinas.

I remember one day in geography class at St. Alban’s, exhibiting the typical brash arrogance of a youthful Anglo-Saxon, raising my hand, being called on by the teacher, and pronouncing “Sir, I have studied geography all my life, and I spend a lot of time reading maps. I don’t believe there exists such a place called ‘the Malvinas’ though the Falklands…”. I was going to continue that the Falklands “are roughly the shame shape and size and in the same place as this map depicts” (or something to that effect) but I had been interrupted by such a hail of paper, pens, and whatever moveable objects my fellow students could get their hands on (I think Nico, that Russian bastard, had actually thrown a book) that I found it more prudent to take cover underneath my desk rather than continue upon the particular oratorical course upon which I had embarked.

Nonetheless, we pray eternal rest to all the soldiers who fell on those windy isles a quarter-century ago, and that those who survived will live in the peace which their sacrifice has earned for them.

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It is interesting how little-valued accuracy was in the depiction of flags “back in the day”. In this illustration, for example, the flags of Wales and “Ireland (North)” are mere inventions while the Scottish and Indian ones are arguable yet imprecise.

The “Welsh” flag depicted is a red ensign that is defaced with the three feathers of the Prince of Wales.

The “Ireland (North)” flag is handsome, but nonexistent. Northern Ireland had an official flag in use from 1953 until the Parliament of Northern Ireland was prorogued in 1972. (It was never recalled, and has since been superseded by the Northern Ireland Assembly). The flag of “Norn Iron” was a banner of the province’s coat of arms.

The flag of Scotland shown here is not actually the national flag (depicted above as the “St. Andrew” flag) but rather the Scottish royal standard, which is often (and improperly) used as an alternative national flag.

The Indian flag depicted is actually the flag of the Viceroy of India, which (admittedly) was sometimes used as a national flag for India. More often, however, a blue or red ensign was used, defaced with the Star of India.

The Canadian flag depicted here was changed in 1957, when the arms of Canada were themselves changed. The maple leaves in the bottom compartment of the sheild were specified to be “gules” (red). Up to that point, they had previously almost always been rendered “vert” (green). The Canadian flag itself was very controversially and unpopularly replaced by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson with the Maple Leaf Flag. The Leader of the Opposition, the Rt. Hon. John Diefenbaker, derided the Liberal premier’s decision:

“We have had a flag. Flags can be changed. But flags cannot be imposed — the sacred symbols of a people’s hopes and aspirations — by the simple capricious personal choice of a prime minister of Canada. Now then, whenever the overwhelming majority of Canadian people want a new version, and when the design is meaningful and acceptable to most Canadians, that’s democracy. … I asked him [Prime Minister Pearson] this question: as to whether or not, under the circumstance, he would permit or he would arrange for a national referendum and his answer was no.”

WAS I THE only one south of the border who was glued to the computer screen watching CBC TV’s streaming online coverage of the Quebec elections? The results of the vote for the provincial parliament proved surprisingly exciting, perhaps even dramatic. The star of the evening was the stunning success of Mario Dumont’s Action Democratique du Quebec, breaking out of their small strongholds and winning seats across the entire province. They even made inroads in the leftist bastion of Montreal. While they did not win any seats on the island of Montreal, the came second in a number of ridings (as constituencies are known in Canada), and took a number of seats in the Montreal suburbs. But perhaps I should give a little background to what’s going on. (more…)

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